Up at 7 am, breakfast at 8 as usual. We plan to leave from the hotel on foot and do loop walk number 5. When we leave around 9 it’s still pretty chilly, although the sun is out today and there is not a cloud in sight.
We start off on rural roads between snowy fields. It’s an easy hike when the asphalt is free, but very tricky where the snow has compacted into ice. Around Grossarmschlag we take a left and walk down into the steep valley of the Grosse Ohe river. The sun doesn’t reach here so we’re actually colder than on the walk to Lusen mountain.
We hear a large animal run away through the leaves close by, but we don’t manage to have a good look before it disappears in the buses, even though we stand around with a cup of tea and a snack for ten minutes. We see a lot of tracks in the snow: two sets of boots, lots of deer and two sets of squirrel tracks. We have lunch by the Stausee, which is frozen over and making terrible noises as the ice moves. There’s a cool deviation around the dammed lake for fish, that allows them to travel freely up and down the river, without having to cross the large dam.
Since we’re making good time, we hike up the Hoher Saksen, which with its 752 m will be the high point of our day. We can tell we’re at the edge of the snow zone, some hillsides are completely snow free, others are still covered in 10 cm of snow. The lower valleys are completely clear, but the trees up on the hills are covered in a thick layer of hoarfrost.
We are back at the hotel before 3 pm, so we can warm up and take a shower before our scheduled foot & leg massage offered by the hotel as part of the Naturzeit package.
- Steps : 22720
- Floors : 161
- Kilometers : 16.08
Febe writes 